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Ryan Seacrest's Piano Concerto #2
Ryan Seacrest's Piano Concerto #2 was the newest entry in the celebrity classical music sweepstakes underway with the San Francisco Symphony. I had the pleasure to be at Davies Auditorium last night. It has now been renamed The Ty-D-Bol Culture Forum, for the premiere of Ryan Seacrest's brilliant new Piano Concerto #2.
Piano Is Easy
It was fake-played with fervid passion by fake celebrity pianist Ashton Kutcher. The San Francisco Symphony, now renamed the Procter and Gamble Fine Family of Products Orchestra, was in excellent form. The venerable Justin Bieber took the helm.
San Francisco Symphony Renamed
You may recall that the symphony was only recently renamed when the new corporate sponsors stepped in to save the orchestra. This was after a much-publicized strike by the rebellious musicians.
Seacrest was highly visible in his private box seat, jauntily attired in a lime-green tuxedo ensemble. He acted as a rather haughty, pompadoured escort to the lovely Ivanka Trump. Ivanka was stunning as always, in a gold, flame retardant suit by Enrico Ferrogone topped off with a florid ostrich feather hat.
Ivanka's Appearance
Her hat, according to many bystanders, was in danger of stealing the show. Many said her hat blocked the view of more than a dozen disgustingly wealthy spectators. A hush fell over the auditorium as the lights dimmed and Kutcher took the stage. He was dressed in a dusty old-time cowboy outfit that looked perfectly sized for a Quentin Tarrentino epic.
Kutcher did not, of course, actually play the piano part. That was left to a diminutive North Korean slave named Kim Dong Foo. The new manner, apparently, is to have a celebrity on the bill as soloist to draw the crowd. The star pays a sweatshop no-name to play the actual solo concerto part.
Ashton Kutcher Plays Starring Role
Ashton sat quietly by the piano in a plush blue armchair, smoking a pipe during the entire spectacle. The audience, of course, loved it and many recorded it on their pink iphones. Bieber, the conductor of the Ty-D-Bol Orchestra, looked a little shaky at first in his dress slacks and no shirt or top whatsoever. He mounted the podium and looked curiously at the conductor's musical score.
He then disdainfully discarded it, joining Kutcher in the loge seating at the edge of the stage. They began smoking a large cigarette, which he generously shared with Kutcher and several members of the audience. I could not hear the opening bars of the concerto, a dimly lit viola solo, because of the giggling and cackling of the two stars downstage.
The Concerto Proceeds
Luckily forty-four highly trained trombones soon made their entrance and drowned out the tepid violas. And I must confess that I heard little more of the fabled concerto, for the entire house was agog when Beyonce made a late entrance with her pet monkey April.
She proceeded to noisily spread a picnic blanket at the edge of the stage with her forty-seven bewigged sycophants. But the ovation was immense when the end came and Kutcher jumped up to take credit for the perfomance. He crowded the crestfallen Kim Dong Foo from the stage.
The audience, reared on MTV, Yoo Hoo and Doritos, knew what it liked, and it wanted more Seacrest. So the proud author came to the stage and had the hapless Kim Dong Foo play one of his sacred Hollywood Preludes on the piano. Unfortunately I could not hear as Bieber got into a nasty altercation with Beyonce's pet monkey and all the rest was a blur of ostrich feathers.
Beethoven Who?
I can say that culture is safe for the masses for centuries to come in the New America, now that Eric Trump has been made Minister of Kultur by President Trump. Oh, and they played a piece by some guy named Beethoven, whoever that is.
REFERENCES
Music History
What Killed the Golden Age of the Piano
Carl Tausig Cooks His Cat
I Meet Aaron Copland
George Sand Killed Chopin
Why Brahms Must Have Been Fat
Artur Rubinstein Was A Vampire
Igor Stravinsky Loses His Cool
Vladimir Horowitz Goes To The Racetrack
Beethoven Was No Beauty
The World’s Largest Blue Danube Waltz
Was Mozart Murdered?
Beethoven’s Rage Over A Lost Penny
Franz Schubert, The First Bohemian
Chopin’s Singing Piano Tone
Stravinsky’s Good Luck
Tchaikovsky’s Greatest Fan
Hector Berlioz and the Orchestral Train Wreck
Piano Lessons with Papa Bach
Piano Lessons with Frederic Chopin
The Great Piano Craze of 1910
The American Piano Wars
Why Hugo Wolf Went Insane
Rachmaninoff and the Evolution of Pop Songs
Musical Feuds
Piano In The Past Was Better
The Master’s Hands
Einstein’s Piano
Einstein’s Violin Improvisations In Gypsy Style
A History of Piano and Numbers
